Guitar Legend Les Paul, 76 And With Arthritis, Still Playing Clubs

Legendary Les Paul Lets Two Fingers Do Work Of 10

Guitar Man

April 12, 1992|By ROGER CATLIN; Courant Rock Critic

NEW YORK — Among the many, many inventions of Les Paul, who single-handedly changed the sound of popular music with the solid body electric guitar and multitrack recording, was something called the multiplier.

As introduced on his folksy radio shows from the late '30s to the early '50s when he and his singing wife Mary Ford were the king and queen of pop music, the multiplier could make one guitar sound like several; or one voice sound like a chorus.

It's the kind of thing that might come in handy now, when at the age of 76, he waits in a New York nightclub for his usual, widely varied Monday night audience to come in and hear him play his sublime instrumentals, which have just been issued on a deluxe boxed set.

"The young kids will stun you," Paul says in the velour-walled basement club of Fat Tuesday's, the prestigious jazz club. "There will be young kids in the first row and next to them, a person pushing 100. The audience is very wide down here."

Still, after a quadruple bypass operation 11 years ago, and arthritis that has stiffened all but two of his fingers, he wonders whether he'll be able to live up to the effortless playing that can be heard on the remastered tracks of "Les Paul: The Legend and the Legacy" -- the first of many reissues to be coming out.

Of all the inventions he's come up with to enhance the guitar -- phasers, various flangers, reverb, delay, the floating bridge pickup, electrodynamic pickup, dual pickups, the 14-fret guitar, the headless guitar, the multipliers and the mythical Les Paulverizer -- there was nothing in his toolbox to overcome the arthritic paralysis. There is no multiplier for healthy fingers.

And so he did. "I figured anything I had that I could play with four fingers, I could play with two fingers," he says, showing off a sandpapered pick he keeps a good grip on. "The public had to sweat out a lot of wrong notes. When I came down here, I explained

to them I had to learn how to play all over again and I hoped they had a lot of patience."

They did. Indeed, the audience is packed for the two shows he's been playing weekly for eight years now. They marvel when he puts his spin on standards, from "Always" to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," not to mention his own No. 1 hits like "How High the Moon."

More than just an inventor, Paul is an inventive stylist, adding a humorous spin or winking musical quote that keeps the musicians in his current trio, Gary Mazzeroppi and Les Pallo, on their toes.

"When I saw that I play better than I ever played in my life with two fingers than I did with 10, I was very encouraged to continue on," Paul says. "And right now I'm proud to say I play more guitar than I did before my arthritis -- and before I retired."

Paul got the idea to perform a weekly club date in New York about the time he and Mary Ford had released what would be their last records in the mid-'60s. But at the time, Ford was tiring of their hectic show-biz schedule and wanted to retire.

"We broke up because Mary didn't want to work anymore," Paul says. He wanted to slow down too, but he also wanted to produce and maybe play a club once a week. That was still too much for Ford; the two divorced in 1964. Shortly before she died in 1977, though, Paul says she called and wanted to get the act back together.

"I told her time had passed us by," Paul says. Even though he had won a Grammy for some duo albums with Chet Atkins, he hadn't performed in years and was on his way to quadruple bypass surgery in 1980.

After the operation, Paul's doctor told him to keep busy; part of that meant playing that weekly nightclub.

So he called Fat Tuesday's. "They said, `Les who?' "

The name should have rung a bell from his most famous invention -- the Les Paul model Gibson guitar, which was unveiled in 1952 and hasn't changed since.

"I'm constantly preaching to Gibson: Don't change the Les Paul guitar," he says. "It's here forever. It's a classic. It's one of the greatest guitars that ever came into being -- whether my name is on it or not. ... The Fender Stratocaster and Les Paul guitars are the two most famous instruments out there.

"But I'm constantly talking to the guitar manufacturers: Don't sit on your duff, but step out and get ahead and constantly make new Les Pauls. Don't stop making the old ones, but add to the line; stay in step with today's technology, which is changing so fast."

The original remains a best seller even though there have been newer models released, including the Les Paul Personal, the Professional, the Recording and the Signature -- the latest model in 1973.

"I would love to see another model of the guitar," Paul says with a small smile. "Let's call it a new name: the Les Paul Tomorrow. Les Paul Innovation. Les Paul Extra Special. Les Paul Deluxe. Les Paul Ultra."